DS Sliders
by Thor2000
Summary: Sequel to DS Inheritance as the Sliders encounter a parallel Carolyn Stoddard escaping through the Parallel Time Room and following them into other Collinwoods in other alternate realities. Also picks up events in DS Timeshift.
1. Default Chapter

Her name was Victoria Winters. Raised in a foundling home for her entire life, she dreamed of a chance to discover who she truly was and to meet whatever brothers and sisters she might actually have. It wasnt that different a dream than anyone else had the foundling home had and she did like her time there getting to be a big sister or a mother to the others who lived there. It wasnt the same as knowing the truth, but it was what she had. In 1980, though, a week after her thirty-fifth birthday, she received a message from a woman named Elizabeth Collins-Stoddard. The woman claimed to be her mother by means of weaving a story about wanting to keep her and being unable to do so because she had been betrothed to marry someone else. There was no mention of her fathers identity in the letter and that question was at the top of her lips as Victoria packed up her belongings and traveled to the far off corner of the world known as Collinsport, Maine.

What Vicki found was much different. She met a sister named Carolyn Stoddard and was told that their mother had passed away some years before and that the letter had been sent sealed by the family lawyers. Carolyn lived alone in the immense family home as the last known member of a once large and wealthy family. That much was the truth, but Vicki suspected so much more was hidden in the dark shadows of the huge gothic edifice of the home on the estate. Carolyn seemed to eschew sunlight and was mostly seen at night. As Vicki began recalling everything she could remember from vampire movies, a few things also tried to dissuade her beliefs. Carolyn did have a reflection in the dining room mirror and she did not have an aversion to the symbol of the cross. Either the vampire lore was incorrect, or her Gothic-minded sister was something else entirely. Whatever the answer was, she was certain she could find it in the closed off section of the house. It was the only place in the whole house she had not been in and she had an unavoidable prerogative that the secret being kept from her was in there. During another of her sisters conspicuous absences, she forced her way into the closed off part of the house as an inexplicable wave of apprehension and dread came over her. Fighting the illogical panic attack she was feeling, she tried to rationalize the fear overwhelming her by reminding her that this was her family home. She had a perfect right to see any part of it. She left the door behind ajar and passed through two arches supporting a short hall. The ceiling rose high aloft her head into the rafters of the house with a midway balcony above her to the attic rooms. Her feet carried her forward through an arch into a long corridor lined with doors. All her memories of reading Nancy Drew novels were returning her as she stopped quietly and looked around the empty corridor. The area was dark and meticulous as some museum after hours. The air even smelled sweet like cinnamon or some other rich spice. Between bedroom doors were paintings above ornate cabinets. She glanced nervously at the first painting of a beautiful blonde and regal grand dame. The nameplate read "Angelique Bouchard-Collins" and her rich azure eyes seemed to be following her. Vicki turned to a chair nearby. In the seat, a book had been left upside down as if someone had just left it. Covered in a plain black cover, its inner title page read "The Iliad."

Out the corner of her eye, Vicki thought she saw a glimpse of someone hurrying to get out of her way. She turned back to Angeliques portrait and forced herself to look closer to the visage of the beautiful woman upon it. It was still watching her as she felt a shudder down her spine. A faint noise of weeping was guiding Vicki as she entered a bedroom with a door left ajar. She had the feeling someone was crying and advanced on a chair before a fire in a burning fireplace. Someone sat obscured in the chair before her. Wanting to see the person in it, Vicki forced herself forward and tried to say something just before the visage of Liz Stoddard turned from it and finally stood up to her.

"Why'd you do it, Carolyn?" She asked distraughtly. "Why did you do it?

"Do what?" Vicki asked. "What'd she do?

"Carolyn," Liz's spirit seemed to reliving the last seconds of her life. "Why would you kill your mother?

Vicki gasped and turned around as hands grabbed her and spun her around. Roger Collins entered the bedroom from somewhere behind her and gripped her tightly as he too became trapped in time.

"I treated you like a daughter." He said to her. "How could you do what you did?

"I'm not Carolyn!" Vicki forced her arms loose and turned as Barnabas Collins stood blocking the doorway while leaning on his cane.

"Carolyn," He looked distraughtly to her. "I'm so sorry. I never meant what happened to occur."

"What happened?" Vicki implored confused and alarmed to the shades starting to surround her. She stepped back into the chair itself, landed within it and tipped backward with her back to the floor looking up to the ghosts. Flipped over completely, Vicki held her head as David Collins stood looking at her.

"I didn't mean to see! I didn't mean to see!" He started screaming as Vicki looked back. Roger and Liz were reaching down to her as Barnabas watched. Vicki suddenly saw other faces of people emerging out of the air she didn't recognize. A handsome figure with sideburns covered in dust, a beautiful blonde woman with white skin morosely watching, a forlorn little girl watching from another chair, a sinister reverend with tortured eyes, another man in period clothes frowning a look of sheer hatred and a brunette ingnue hiding in a corner behind the others. Several of them advanced on her as they reached down to her. Vicki backed to the wall and shrieked as she recoiled from their undead touches. She froze where she was and counted to ten under her breath before slowly opening her eyes. They were all gone. She wasnt sure if they had been real or if she had imagined them. Looking around once more, she realized the room was just as she had found it. The once beautiful room was now ruined and deserted. Portraits were faded and furniture was covered in dust as debris and disassembled furniture lined walls. Her eyes gasped as she noticed out in the corridor the portrait of Angelique was the only one not quite so ruined by neglect. It seemed much more vibrant than everything else left abandoned and neglected in this wing of the mansion. Vickis voice gasped trying to forget the spectral images that had frightened her. She braced herself to stand up off the floor for a second and paused still partially on her hands and feet. Starting to rise, she noticed the feet of someone standing before her. She looked up and up as Carolyn towered over her on the floor like a miniature giantess. She had the same despondent look she had as when Vicki had first arrived in Collinwood.

"You know, don't you?"

"You killed them." Vicki slowly stood on her feet and she realized part of her demented sisters secret. "You killed them all!

"Vicki," Carolyn advanced on Vicki shaking her head as her perfect hair lightly swayed elegantly on her shoulders. "You don't know what you're talking about. Let's go downstairs and talk about it."

"No!" Vicki backed from her. "I don't know what you are, but you're not human!

"Vicki, you're talking crazy." Speaking slowly and assuredly with a demented grin, Carolyn followed her down the hall. "Take my hand and we'll talk about it."

"Don't touch me!" Vicki shifted Angelique's portrait when her back hit the wall. "You're a monster! You're not real!

"Vicki, you're losing it." Carolyn didn't look away from Vicki as she instinctively straightened Angelique's picture with one gesture. Her eyes were methodical and cold as if it was just something she had to do. "Just touch me and I can make you feel all better."

"No!" Vicki backed away further as she bumped into some doors. "You want to kill me, just as she you did them!" Her eyes looked into the second floor library as she started screaming. There were bodies everywhere sitting at tables with books or standing before shelves. Each one was dried and desiccated without anything remotely human left behind to them to suggest they were once alive. Skeletons with hair stared back at her with empty eye sockets and hideous grins permanently etched on their frozen decayed faces. Posed and displayed in deteriorating clothes, they sat in chairs with books in their hands or stood balanced against shelves as if they had just been caught reading. There had to be over a dozen of them. The whole room looked to be some sort of shrine dedicated to the dead. Her voice filled the room with the shocking piercing strain of a woman losing her mind!

"Vicki," Carolyn spoke. "Stop screaming. This is our family and friends." She turned to a body wearing a decaying dress. "Mother, this is Vicki. I told you about her." She paused. "Mother says you're more beautiful than she thought."

Vicki froze in terror against a shelf as she watched Carolyn moving through the room talking to the corpses. Her hands pulled to her face, her eyes rounded in shock behind her fingers, Vicki squeezed in the wall behind her by a cabinet of books in shock as her demented half-sister paused by one of the nearly mummified corpses and even kissed it.

"Joe, we need to find a date for Vicki." Carolyn turned toward two skeletons literally propping each other up. "Tom or Chris? I don't think they're her type, but I can ask." She looked back into the alcove. "Mother, tell Jason he is too old. She then turned her head to the remains of a young man playing checkers with the emaciated rotting remains of another young man. Vicki, I think this young man has a crush on you. No, not David, the one I caught in the tower last week."

"You're mad." Vicki forced out. "You're not normal!" She started to run out past Carolyn, but the demented blonde stopped her quickly with an eager grimace and closed the doors. She took the key from the double doors, locked them with a sadistically eager grimace and then grinned almost demonically back to Vicki as her blonde hair fell gracefully off her shoulder.

"Mad?" Carolyn dropped the key down the top of her black sweater. "Well, we all go a little mad sometimes. Let me help you feel better!" She lunged forward as Vicki shrieked, grabbed a book and threw it at Carolyn. The blonde psycho ducked too fast to be merely human. She had protected her solitude too religiously to give it up like this. Disgusted as she was by the corpses around her, Vicki started darting past the remains of her dead family and hurried around the table between her and Carolyn. With the mere piece of furniture between her and Vicki, Carolyn reached forward and shoved the heavy oak table with minimal effort and moved it with a crash into the wall. Vickis eyes widened at the remarkable feat of strength as she whirled around to keep her eyes on her. Could anything stop her? Was there anything that could? As she spun around to keep her eyes on her, Vicki felt her weight sliding under her and reached to stop her fall. Stumbling over bones in a chair, she crashed to the floor atop a tangle of broken bones and dried cadaverous human remains trapped in a tangle of clothing as Carolyn dived over the table blocking her from her sister. Vicki barely had a chance to leap to her feet as her younger half-sisters hands grabbed her leg. In seconds, Vicki felt an immediate burning sensation from her as she felt herself getting older and her body drying from the inside out. She could barely scream for help now. All she could do was lift her head and open her mouth in a silent scream as she tried to hold her last breath. It felt as if she was drowning in the open room as her jaw dropped and her lungs expanded trying to get as much air as they could. Her very soul felt it was almost entering Carolyn as her demented half-sister tilted her head back in and gasped at the sensation of her sisters life force filling her every being. Maybe this would be the one to do it. Maybe finally she could end this curse on her. Vicki briefly felt she was inside her demented sister watching her do this to herself. In her minds eye, she had a brief vision of herself in her own hands. She practically felt one with Carolyn for a brief second and then the sensation of vanishing deep into her with what felt like almost a hundred other previous victims. She felt the glee of triumph; the ecstasy of sheer power and even the evil taste of contented euphoria for a second more herself slipping away from her sisters powerful consciousness. Carolyns laughing voice came from her throat and started to lightly grin in demented pleasure as Vickis eyes slowly glanced up at the wolf's head cane in her hand vanishing from her sight. She had landed on top of it from of the bony cadaver she had shattered underneath her. Whatever was happening wasnt complete. With every last fiber of might left in her, her fingers weakly gripped it as she reared back hard. Hitting Carolyn as firmly as she could with it, the burning stopped, but she felt like an old woman as her demonic sibling gasped full of strength and vitality. The blonde psycho grinned ear-to-ear rising up from the floor as Vicki hobbled on her burning leg and swung the old cane to warn her again from touching her.

"Why did you do that, Vicki?" Carolyn grinned devilishly once more. "I could make you so beautiful. All I need is your soul - your life force - you won't miss it. Do you hear them complaining?

"I..." Vicki backed away wearily swinging the cane. "Don't know... What you are, but..." She felt as if she was having a heart attack as she backed against the window. "You're not getting... My life."

"Vicki," Carolyn reached for her face. "You tasted it for a brief second. Wasnt it wonderful? Wasnt the sensation more than you could want? The sheer wonderful taste of complete immortality. You'll be so much more happier a part of me."

No Vicki thought she had a glimpse of another person in the room. Her head spun toward to face them as she realized the ugly truth. It was her reflection in a mirror and just how old she had now become. Her once fresh baby doll face and looks had aged almost fifty years. Her bright blue eyes had lost her sparkle and long creases crisscrossed her face. As she slowly slipped into shock, she saw Carolyn behind her in the mirror starting to grab her.

No! Vicki turned to strike once more for one last time as her sister caught the cane and lurched it from her like a parent snatching a toy from a child. Carolyn took a mere second to snap it in half and throw it behind her. That weapon gone, her hands reached to Vickis face and whatever was left of her life force. Vicki stepped back to try and flee and hit the wall as her sister pushed her to the floor. It was a movement she could not survive. She felt herself lurched from her body once more and then once again falling into a slow deep dark pit of non-existence. Carolyn heard one last gasp from her sister as Victoria stopped fighting. Lifting the two of them up together, she carefully laid Vicki to sit in a chair across from the remains of their mother. Resting her sisters body to rest upright in the chair, she shifted her weight and stood up straight. Her hair felt longer, her body a bit lighter and the last ounces of euphoria tingling through her small frame as she gasped. Her hands fell flat to her chest as she tried to contain her breath and then glided slowly around her bosom and down her hips as she caught her breath. She backed to the door a moment more and looked at the new body in her shrine. Leaning against the locked entryway, she took a moment to assimilate the new memories amalgamating into her brain while her hands started searching her person for the key.

There, Vicki, She felt the key caught in her bra as she pushed it to the top of her sweater. Was that so bad? She paused a second as she heard her sisters corpse talking to her.

Apology accepted. Now, you enjoy your long talk with our mother as I rest. I need to head to the train depot tonight to find some company She pulled the key from her collar as she released herself from the locked room. As she departed, a tear rolled down the face of the woman formerly known as Victoria Winters.


	2. Chapter 2

2

Time passed as it often was known to do. The seasons changed and the Maine State Police had regularly camped out near Collinsport, Maine. The tiny community was the scene of over forty-nine vanishings in and around the small city in over ten years. Rumors were that people were being kidnapped to work on ships against their will, but the list of the missing included both men and women. There was an obvious serial killer loose in town, but who were they and where did they hide? A man would likely be killing the missing women, but some of the male victims were huge, brawny-type football players like the three college students who vanished together. Others tried to make sense of it by wondering where all the bodies were going. There were numerous empty houses in town and the largest among them was Collinwood, but police and detectives never saw a thing occur out there. They stayed close to the train depot where the majority of the people had vanished as well as the town hotel, the diner and the Blue Whale Bar and Grill.

Tony Peterson only cared about one of the vanishings. The disappearance of Victoria Winters was always on his mind. She was the last known heir to Collinwood, and her teachers at the New York Foundling Home did verify that she had left for Collinsport, but no one was quite sure if she ever arrived. Several years of footwork left no results in her vanishing, but then he defended a solitary cab driver named Willie Loomis in a case of assault and battery. Since the argument had involved whether Loomis was daring enough to stay the night in Collinwood with its ghosts, he accidentally let it slip on how he had once dropped off a young lady up here several years before. Nearly ten years after the fact, Peterson rode out to Collinwood with Loomis to delve into the facts and trigger Loomis's old memories. As they pulled up outside the old veranda, two men out front stood waiting under the high sun waiting for them. Sheriff Don Taylor turned round as the small white Collinsport cab came to a stop and Peterson emerged first from the back seat. Loomis shut the engine off and slid from the driver's seat as he stood in fear of the mansion. He felt as if the old place with its vacant empty eyes was staring at him.

"Now, Loomis," Peterson inhaled on the cigarette between his lips as he motioned to Collinwood from the bottom stairs to the veranda. "Are you sure this is where you left off Victoria Winters?"

"Yes, sir…" Willie stood in fear at the house and stood touching his cab rather than follow him to the front door.

"This is the same house my good buddy Jason McGuire vanished in back in 1968. I hate this house."

"Was she expecting anyone?" Sheriff Taylor asked. "Did you see another person?"

"I don't think so. I don't remember." Willie looked over the front of the house as if he felt someone he could not see staring at him.

"Gentlemen," The tall, regal and imposing figure of Timothy Elliot Stokes spoke up. "I assure you, if this Victoria Winters of whom you are looking for ever stayed more than a week here, I would have known it. I've been watching over this place from the Old House on the request of Bill Malloy ever since the Collins Family vanished and I have never seen the young lady."

"You don't mind if we search the interior." Taylor started to wonder if the intellectual professor could be the serial killer his men had been searching for over the last twenty years.

"I whole heartedly wish you would." Stokes turned and jingled the old keys left behind to him by Elizabeth Stoddard before she herself had vanished.

"Look, I don't want to stay here. This place gives me the creeps." Willie had wandered nervously back to his cab and opened the driver's side door.

"Okay, Loomis, you can go." Sheriff Taylor nodded to him. "But stay in touch in case we have more questions." He watched as Willie hurriedly slid into his cab and started it back up. The back wheels kicked up the gravel of the old driveway as he sped down the hill. As he raced away, Porter turned back to Stokes unlocking the huge haunted house. Tony Peterson quickly tossed aside his cigarette from his lip and squashed it under his shoe. For him, stepping under the front eaves of Collinwood for the entrance and hearing his feet resonate on its cold parquet floors was the equivalent of walking into a giant coffin. Taylor's flashlight pierced the darkness ahead into the drawing room as slivers of light from the once grand garden in back slipped in through drapes of a curtain. As Stokes strolled ahead to widen and open up that window to sunlight, Taylor's light moved toward the grand staircase to the right and the balcony to the upstairs. The foyer was barely lit up by a cavalcade of different colored lights piercing the stain glass window at the top of the stairs, but Taylor instead passed the beam of his flashlight back the other way to the long dark hall left of the entrance. More slivers of light broke from open rooms from behind furniture in darkness. Dead flowers filled every vase. Thick layers of dust covered the top of every piece of furniture as Taylor passed his fingers over the top of the portrait by the left of the doors.

"That's the first Barnabas Collins." Stokes emerged from the Drawing Room as they looked over the portrait. "My ancestor Ben Stokes was a manservant to the gentleman before he left for England. Collins, that is, not my ancestor. He was a revolutionary man and his last known descendant was quite a person himself. I met the man a few times myself before he…"

"Professor," Sheriff Taylor responded a bit blunt. "I don't mean to be rude, but we are looking for traces of Victoria Winters. We're not here for a history lesson."

"Of course," Stokes excused himself as he tucked his monocle back into his vest. "Please excuse me if my interest in the past overwhelms me. I assume you'd like to see the upstairs. If your Miss Winters ever stayed but one night here, she'd have taken a bedroom I'd imagine. That would be a logical start."

"Of course." Taylor's shadow agreed.

"I'm beginning to think more than ever that this house is at the center of all the disappearances in town." Tony followed behind the two larger men with him. "How many bedrooms does this house have?"

"Almost forty, I believe." Stokes reached the top first and turned for the door to the top hall. "But at the time of the Collins family's disappearance, they only used the ones in this part of the house." He opened the door to the end of a hallway. One corridor lead left to the bedrooms deeper into the house and sheer darkness while the window to the right of them partially lit the way to more guest rooms. Stokes reached for the first door.

"This room once belonged to my colleague Dr. Julia Hoffman." He started talking again. "She briefly lived with the Collins Family at the start of the first attacks and murders in town." He watched as Taylor and Peterson searched the room over by opening cabinets and drawers.

"Is she still alive?" Peterson asked.

"No, she died of cancer three years ago." Stokes answered. "But before she died, she told me that she expressed an interest in the Collins family because she felt they were connected in some way to an attack on a patient of hers named Maggie Evans. She became even more so convinced when Maggie was found on the beach dead a month after she started treating her."

"I remember that." Sheriff Taylor paused a moment. "I had just started out working with Sheriff Patterson during those attacks. She'd been drained of blood."

"Exactly," Stokes continued down the hall. "Before Hoffman could delve further, she was called back to Windcliff to help with another patient but ended up detained there for almost a month. When she finally returned to the grand estate, it was deserted. Neither of us saw any of the Collins Family ever again after that." He opened the door to two more empty bedrooms along the way. Taylor and Peterson took one of each as Stokes stood in the dark. They had passed the length of the downstairs foyer and were nearing the last of the bedrooms. The corridor forked to the front of the house and toward the door of the west wing at the end of the hall.

"What's down there?" Peterson asked curiously as he peered to the windows to the front of the house.

"Bathroom," Stokes responded. "And the bedroom of Mr. Roger Collins. Quite a pompous gentleman, I found him to be quite…"

"Professor."

"Sorry." Stokes stepped out of the way as the sheriff opened the next door behind him. Brushing cobwebs out of the way, he peered on the abandoned remains of a boy's room. The single bed was covered in dust and the few possessions left behind stood waiting to be touched.

"This belonged to David Collins." Stokes stood in the hall as Porter opened the closet and blew dust off books. "He was quite an incorrigible boy, but so full of promise."

"And down here?" Peterson opened the next door on the right.

"Carolyn Stoddard." Stokes answered firmly as Porter searched the room across the hall. "She was the first to vanish. Strange disappearance, too. While Julia was trying to link the Collins family to Maggie Evans, young David swore that the ghost of Sara Collins, the young sister of the first Barnabas Collins, was haunting the estate. I participated with the family to reach the young girl's spirit by means of a séance, but Carolyn vanished in the middle of it. We searched the house days to find her, but she never appeared again." He peered over the simple furnishings as Peterson stooped to the floor to check under the bed. As he rose, he brushed his hand over the bed.

"No dust…" He mumbled suspiciously under his breath. Why didn't this room have dust?

"I found something!" Taylor yelled. Peterson looked to Professor Stokes and rushed past him. Across the hall, the sheriff pulled a suitcase out from under the bed and was opening it up on top. He startled rifling through the few things in it and opening the pockets in the light of the window.

"There's clothes in the armoire too." Taylor replied.

"The letter!" Peterson pulled a faded letter from the lining. "This is the letter that Richard Garner had mailed to Victoria in New York on the pre-conceived instructions of Liz Stoddard. She was in the house!"

"So she made it to Collinwood after all." Stokes placed his monocle to his eye to read the letter by the window. He paused dramatically and turned to Tony and the sheriff. "Now, if she made it to the estate, who did she meet…" He froze and peered past his company to the open door. "Victoria Winters!"

Sheriff Taylor and Tony Peterson turned round too. Standing in the doorway, Victoria stared forlornly lost to them. Her mouth was partially open as her voice stayed frozen on her lips. Without saying a word, she turned to the door of the west wing and gradually turned transparent until she was gone altogether.

"Gentlemen," Stokes recognized the girl's ghost from the photos of when she was still alive. "What we've just seen is the ghost of the girl you are looking for. I now believe more than ever that the body of Victoria Winters is now somewhere in this house!"

Sheriff Taylor jostled the door to the west wing. Quickly annoyed by its reluctance to open, he unfurled his gun from his holster.

"Stand back." He shot off the doorknob with his gun as the echoing force of the house returned the noise resonating on them several more times through the dark shadows of the house. Stokes shook and stirred his finger in his ear to rid himself of the ringing in it as Peterson covered his ears.

"You could have warned us!" He yelled.

"Right." Taylor took the lead. Immediately behind the door was a long corridor to the far unused end of the house. Within one room they passed, a stairway lead up to the attic level. Peeking in empty rooms along the way, Patterson entered the long hallway beyond stretching left and right. Dusty abandoned furniture lay everywhere in pieces or intact in the hallway as he saw movement at the far end to the right.

"I ain't 'fraid of no ghost, I ain't 'fraid of no ghost…" He mumbled over and over on the long walk down the hall with his gun drawn. The room at the end had double doors, but as he kicked the left door open, he was met by silence. His eyes panned the whole suite up to the rafters in the ceiling and then the minor rooms beyond. It seemed deserted but for the three of them. Stokes turned to the open windows and the curtain caught in the breeze.

"Nothing." He said.

"I saw someone."

"Oh god!" Peterson bolted from the library outside of the suite and vomited on the floor outside a bedroom. He was keeled over a chair and pointing to the library.

"What?" Taylor yelled.

"Library…" Tony Peterson tasted the stomach acid in his mouth from his last meal as Stokes pulled the doors wider. He stood aghast alongside the sheriff as they viewed corpses of corpses among corpses everywhere. Dried out, desiccated, twisted bodies of what used to be people standing lightly tilted against corners, sitting in chairs with books, holding hands, leaning against windows to the glass and lying across the tops of shelves. A brief impartial count Taylor started weakly counted nearly forty just on one side alone.

"Oh god…" He started to feel sick himself. Taken a bit aback, Stokes stepped forward into the room. It should have stunk from the corpses, but it was only musty like a sealed tomb. He sighted one with long hair sitting neatly across from the entrance in moldy clothes and noticed a necklace on her neck.

"Dispatch." Taylor heard Peterson coughing up bile as he spoke to his radio. "I've got bodies here at Collinwood. Repeat: I've got bodies."

"Gentlemen," Stokes turned with the necklace. "We have found your Victoria Winters."


	3. Chapter 3

3

Early the next morning, the trucks from every local hospital in the tri-county area returned to start collecting bodies again. Men from the state police had turned on the power in Collinwood to see in the old house and stay in it over night patrolling the exterior and grounds. Reporters from as far away as Chicago had come to see the house of the dead. There had been sixty-one bodies at last count and more coming out from the closed off wing of the house. It was going to be the biggest new story in the country since the Bates murder trial in Fairvale, California when a young man confessed to killing his mother and keeping her preserved body. The morbidly curious without anything to do were coming from as far away as Bangor to come and watch the crime scene investigators dressed like astronauts in white baggy suits carrying out countless body bags upon of dead remains. Some officers had to send away the curious on-lookers as other police officers lightly scoured the house for more bodies in the huge house. Local county coroner Cyrus Longworth stepped out in the fresh air from the downstairs kitchen and pulled off his helmet. Sweat poured from his short curly blonde hair as he drank from his bottle of cold water. He poured a bit over his head just before Sheriff Don Taylor stepped from the back door of the kitchen and looked upon him.

"So, doc, what do you think?" He replied sipping a bottle of soda. "Know what killed them?"

"Well," Longworth started. "You can discount Stokes as a suspect. These people all died from heavy bombardment of electro-magnetic radiation." He gasped from the heat and collected his bearings in the cool breeze from the cliffs and the shadow of the house.

"Say that again?"

"Sheriff," Longworth looked up with sweat still dripping from his eyebrows. "Every single person up there was burnt out on a cellular level from the inside out. Imagine every cell of your body burning itself out until there was nothing left to burn like a fire reducing wood to ash. Only a heavy burst of radiation would do that."

"Nothing else?"

"Nothing else!" Longworth drank his water again. "You've got bodies of people up there only reported missing five years ago that look like they died fifty years ago. Whatever killed these people literally sucked their lives right out of them." Taylor's radio squawked for him as Longworth tried to catch his breath in the outside patio.

"Taylor, here."

"Sheriff," Officer Bruno Hess was wandering the attic with a flashlight. "Professor Stokes is back. He has those photos of the Collins family you wanted."

"Good," Taylor looked to Longworth a second as he mind went back to his work. "Have him wait for me in the drawing room. Forensics will be done carrying bodies out soon and I want a massive sweep of the house before we lock it up tight."

"Roger." Hess looked to Stokes as the professor poked through the bottles of brandy in the old Collins liquor cabinet. "Will you be okay in here sir?"

"If I'm not safe here, where else would I be safe?" Stokes poured some sherry as he hoped it was even more refined over the years. "Cheers…" He lifted his glass up.

Hess smirked as he stepped back. Around him, the old edifice of Collinwood he had heard and seen so little about was teeming with police from both local and state and forensic men from the state capital. A rogue news reporter or TV newsman was doing his work off to the side, but underneath it all, Hess started thinking about his own past. He was a skinny kid with an indiscernible future several years before when he attended Collinsport High school with Carolyn Stoddard and like the rest of his male peers he recalled her as extremely attractive girl he would have sawed off his own limb for. Back then, she dated Joe Haskell, but now Hess found himself in her house wandering the rooms and getting tangled in cobwebs as he checked and locked windows and strided past forensic scientists carrying out the dried out husks of human remains. He tried to hold his stomach as one of the large black bags just barely bumped his leg as he stood aside. Ever horror film he had ever seen played through his mind as he wondered what part of whose body had just brushed him from behind a thin layer of fabric. He allowed then to pass as his partner emerged from a side hall.

"Dirk," Bruno looked up to him. "Taylor wants us to search the house over and start locking it up."

"Okay," Dirk Wilkins answered back. "You start upstairs and I'll start downstairs." He started to walk away then turned back. "Oh yeah, and, Boo!"

"Right." Bruno smirked. He wasn't the only guy who feared the house, but they all had a sense of humor about it. He just turned back to the west wing where most of the activity had occurred and started back tracking. Along the way, he walked into rooms and checked windows and closed doors behind him. If any door was open in a future check of the place, it might be a good sign of someone or something else in the place. From the deserted room of Carolyn Stoddard, he started to turn back to the door, but something ethereal flitted past it took quick to be seen.

"Dirk?" Bruno asked. He stepped out with his hand on his firearm and looked up then down the hall. It was empty as the faraway noises of downstairs came up wafting through the floor. Wondering if it were just his imagination, he tried to push the thought of ghosts and specters hiding around every corner out of his mind as he stepped into the west wing and glanced up briefly to the second floor balcony above him. He had an inexplicable feeling of being watched as he nervously shifted his gaze backwards and behind him. This far into the house was muffling all the noises that convinced him he was not alone. Strolling nervously to the old library, he hoped all the bodies had been removed.

It was. The tables and chairs had all been neatly tagged with notes by the forensics team that had been up here. Some of it had even been meticulously shoved aside, but as he turned to depart, he heard one simple concise female voice.

"Mother, why did you let them take you?"

Hess stopped and looked back again. It was so clear and obvious and it had come from this room. His fear of ghosts made his heart skip a beat as his eyes scanned over the dingy carpet marked with tape and forensic flags. A large black chair that had been pulled to the window staring out over the garden had disturbed a few of them. As he advanced on it, he noticed a blonde head of hair belonging to the person sitting in it. He carefully stepped another few inches closer as the petite blonde in it turned to face him.

"Carolyn!"

"Bruno Hess?" She looked just as if not more beautiful than he recalled. Her long luxuriant blonde hair draped down flawlessly over her green sweater. Her legs in her black Capri pants uncrossed themselves as she slowly rose somewhat regally and even a bit threateningly. Her big blue eyes peered upon him as if he was a new conquest. Bruno had never felt scared for his life and so erotically stimulated at the same time in his life.

"My," She gazed up and down him. "You've gotten old."

"You haven't." Bruno wanted to be afraid, but something in him wanted to hold her. "You look more incredible than I recall." He felt like a young boy before her once more.

"Bruno…" Carolyn giggled lightly like a fawning embarrassed schoolgirl. "I'm just going to have to give you a kiss for that."

"Carolyn…" He stepped back from her. "You can't be here. I've got to take you out of here."

"Such a gentleman…" Her eyes looked over him as if he were a conquest. "I may have to show you how much I appreciate that…." Her hands pulled him close as her ruby lips rose to him. She slyly lifted her head and stole a breath from him as Hess felt a sudden cold ravage his body. It was like being dipped in a frozen lake as his breath was torn from his body. He felt his body tightening and his chest contracting for air. Carolyn's grasp felt inhuman as she squeezed the life right out of him and prevented him from breaking free of her embrace. He felt his very essence being leeched from him as his mind was developed by complete blackness. He started screaming uncertain if anyone could hear him.

Someone did hear him. Dirk Wilkins came running up the kitchen stairs with his gun drawn. Sheriff Don Taylor came running into the house from the outside front veranda with Stokes right behind him. Wilkins called his position through the radio as he stormed the west wing and raced toward the old library. His gun drawn, he saw an unidentified woman before him standing above Bruno on the floor.

"Police! Freeze!" He ordered her as someone else slipped behind him. Two state police officers reared guns as the blonde woman before them hissed under her breath and stormed them. Bullets exploded from chambers as she flew backward into the wall. Dirk watched her hit the wall and fall to the floor as he checked his best friend and partner. What he saw nearly made him gag. Bruno's lips had peeled back like parchment from his teeth and his eyes had dried into two decomposed berries within his open eye sockets. His skin and face had dried out and started peeling to expose his rancid decomposed tissues within his body. He had just been alive a few minutes ago!

"Bruno?" Dirk replied as Carolyn suddenly sat up unfazed on the floor.

"Wilkins!" Sheriff Don Taylor rushed into the west wing ahead of his last two officers and the few state police on the estate. It sounded as if he was hearing a re-enactment of the St. Valentine's Day Massacre as men were screaming and rounds of bullets started firing non-stop. As Taylor turned a corner with Professor Stokes running far behind, the shooting stopped and a petite blonde grinning ear to ear dashed from the library.

"Carolyn Stoddard!" Stokes froze as he recognized her. "She's still alive!"

"Get out of my house!" Carolyn reached to the table by her in the hall and lifted it up over her head as she flung it. It crashed with a thunderous boom into the floor continuing to roll forward before knocking down Taylor and several of the officers. Straining to crawl from under it, they wondered how she had lifted it so effortlessly. Carolyn's head flitted left and right looking for a place to run as she backed to the double-door suite behind her. Slamming the doors behind her, she recognized Stokes rushing to her.

"No, Professor," Taylor stopped him as he pulled out his revolver. "She's wanted for questioning now." He stopped to kick down the doors, but they barely responded to his response. He kicked again and unfurled his gun as he blasted the doorknob. Part of it ricocheted from the door and off the wall as he finally kicked the door once more and had it fly open. He stepped back as his men stormed the room.

"Search the back rooms!" He scanned the room from windows to windows and then up to the rafters. Poking his head out one of the windows he started wondering if someone could have leapt from the windows as he judged the height.

"What's this?" Stokes noticed a stray newspaper on the floor.

"Old newspaper." Taylor noticed the date as his men rifled through the back rooms. "It's dated 1990…"

"But look at this," Stokes held part of it up to the light. "William Benjamin Collins, the son of Barnabas and Angelique Collins of Collinwood, has just received a literary scholarship to Southeastern Maine University. Now 19, William Collins is also a very prolific writer and novelist who also investigates cases of suspected paranormal origin for the Collinsport Ghost Society founded by his Uncle David Andrew Collins."

"That doesn't make any sense." Taylor folded his arms after re-holstering his gun. "There is no Collinsport Ghost Society."

"Maybe not to us…" Stokes turned a bit fascinated. "But perhaps in another parallel reality, another band of time if you will, the Collins Family still exists and has always existed. Perhaps, just perhaps, this house serves as a portal to other concurrent timelines alike but also different to our own. Sheriff Taylor, if our Carolyn Stoddard escaped to but one of them, we might never see her again."

"I just fear for whoever finds her…" Taylor added unsure if he believed in other realities.


	4. Chapter 4

4

It was another Collinwood in another reality just as ruined if not more than the one that had watched Carolyn Stoddard degenerate into a psychotic temptress that fed off the lives of others. The roof from the attic to the foyer had collapsed in on itself and the vines that covered the castle-like walls now crept inside around broken furnishings and rotting furniture. The few who had investigated insisted that the place might be worth saving, but others were not so sure. They insisted that the stray and wild animals now prowling the interior had ruined the house, but others were no so sure there were any animals inside. They said the crumbling and rotting structure resonated with the energies of the dead. Witnesses had seen strange things throughout the abandoned mansion from everything from debris that moved and changed position and doors that slammed by themselves. Other trespassers had heard the loud footsteps of a figure marching the length of the place and one man was critically injured by falling masonry from up high where no man could be. Others saw the cruel scowling face of a man that could not exist watching from an upstairs window.

The ghost was that of a man once called Gerard Stiles in life. His name and identity was unknown, but all who knew of him insisted that the former Collins estate was his now to haunt and control. Stiles liked frightening off all who invaded this house. He was the undisputed master of the house and he controlled all that happened in it. Listening to the happy laughter of a female voice, he stepped round a corner and stared upon that of Daphne Harridge. Brunette and as pretty as she had been in life, the former governess pulled the shades of Tad Collins and Carrie Stokes closer to her to protect them. Fearful of Gerard, Carrie pulled away and vanished through a door. Tad held to Daphne a bit more as they broke apart and wandered apart. Gerard stood content that they feared him and continued his round knowing full well that he now controlled Collinwood.

He suddenly stopped as he felt a powerful presence that threatened his own. If that fool Petofi was back to challenge him, he had another thing coming. He stepped out on to the balcony of the foyer and stared into the blinding light illuminating the room. Even he had to cover his spectral eyes to it as it invaded even his bearing. Uncertain as to what it was, he could be sure it could be seen all the way to town. It couldn't be another presence; it felt like a doorway to another realm of existence. Not exactly interested in passing over, the portal was spewing energy and wind out as the energy it threw out caused a poltergeist tide of events in the crumbling house. Dust, litter and debris flew around the violent torrent of swirling energy as figures emerged in it.

"Not again, not again!" A black man in a red tuxedo crashed into the damaged parquet floor first.

"Out of the way!" A young female slid into him followed by a tall handsome young man clutching a device to his chest.

"Mr. Mallory! Mr. Mallory!" A rotund bearded gentleman now landed and rolled to his back. The tornado of lights that had jettisoned them was now dimming and collapsing as they turned to face it. All standing now, they covered their ears as it collapsed with a loud pop. Stiles stood fascinated by the odd occurrence and arrival as his strange visitors gathered their bearings.

"Next time, Q-Ball. I'm pushing a mattress in ahead of us." The black man in the tuxedo replied. He looked around the ruined surroundings, collapsed walls and loose bricks.

"Good idea," The young lady sidled up alongside the one known as Mr. Mallory as if she was fond of him. "How long this time?"

"Fifteen hours, thirty-five minutes and fifty seconds." He read his device as his buddy Rembrandt looked around. "Well, let's see if can get our usual room at the hotel."

"Q-Ball," Rembrandt stared up to Gerard up on the balcony. "I don't think we're wanted here."

"At last," The professor dusted himself off and looked up without fear. "A gentleman's gentleman. Sir, I am Professor Maximillan Arturo and these are my traveling companions. We would like…" He watched as Stiles turned smoky and started fading. He continued turning transparent until he was gone altogether.

"I would like to get the hell out of here." He finished and pointed to the entrance nearly blocked by weeds and long vines. His friends made the path for him as they pushed through and found more outside surroundings.


	5. Chapter 5

5

Walking the near mile into town, the four visitors to this strange new reality realized that they were once again in strange surroundings. The tall handsome young man with them was Quinn Mallory, a rather brilliant young man who had accidentally stumbled upon the means to travel from alternate reality to alternate reality. In the short but indiscernible time that they had started sliding between alternate worlds, they had visited alternate histories where the British had won the Revolutionary War and both Canada and America were British Republics. In another, dinosaurs had yet to go extinct and in yet another the Industrial Revolution had never happened. Each world vibrated on another frequency and in some of them, there was always another adventure to escape and find their way to the mainstream earth they belonged.

His retinue consisted of his mentor, Professor Maximillan Arturo, a man of fine culture and high intelligence. Wade Wells was a friendly female companion well irked by the circumstances of their sliding. Rembrandt Brown was once the hapless bystander sucked into this endless predicament hoping for the best, but now he found himself caring for these people as friends who looked out for him. Wandering upon the hotel in town, they just longed for rest.

"Collinsport Inn." Arturo read the sign out front. "Collinsport? I wonder if this is part of San Francisco in this world?"

"I don't think so." Wade directed their attention to the tourist brochures on the wall for local landmarks. Quinn grabbed the one for Acadia State Park and quickly scanned it.

"Maine." He replied.

"Maine?" Rembrandt reacted confused. "But we always return to San Francisco. How could we land on the east coast?"

"We haven't always landed on the west coast." Arturo acknowledged the diner part of the inn and pulled out a chair to sit at one of the tables. He ordered a coffee from the waitress, but she barely acknowledged him and continued working. Wade sat by the professor as Quinn took a chair after Rembrandt. "How about when we landed in London?"

"That time the slide tunnel locked on to a quantum singularity in a lab." Quinn replied as an old man in owl-like glasses noticed them from his table. "That was no lab we landed in. It was an old house."

"The old house on the hill?" The old man eavesdropped on them.

"Excuse me?" Arturo looked over.

"You're speaking of Collinwood." The old man told them. "The old house on the hill. The locals stay away from it from it because of the ghosts."

"Surely," Wade lightly chuckled. "You don't believe in ghosts."

"Surely, you will find yourself believing in them." The old man was a bit more obese than Professor Arturo. So much so that he moved around on the added support of a cane. He stood up, turned his chair around to them and sat down again to join them. "A few years ago, I was a guest of the Collins Family, a most wonderful family." He began twisting facts and omitting details in telling his past. "They lived in Collinwood, but as I explored the house, I became trapped in a room at the end of the west wing. By time I freed myself, I went in search of the family but found them in serious absence. Within a few minutes, I discovered they had ceased to exist and that Collinwood had become deserted. A neglected old relic deserted and left abandoned to the elements. I could not explain it. I looked up the old newspapers and read that the family had deserted it some years prior because of the ghosts except for a few who lived elsewhere. It was then that I realized that I had stumbled upon a most interesting phenomenon: an opening in time. In one timeline, the Collins I knew still lived in Collinwood, but in this timeline, they had deserted the house and left it to the spirits."

"That's a very interesting story, Mr…." Wade replied.

"Petofi." The old man brushed his gloved right hand against his coat and offered it to Arturo. "Count Andreas Petofi."

"A room to other worlds?" Quinn turned secretly to his professor. "A naturally occurring quantum singularity?"

"Possibly," Arturo spoke in hushed tones. "Could explain how we ended up here." He turned to their guest. "Mr. Petofi, excuse me, I mean, Count Petofi, my colleagues and I would really like to see this room up there if we may."

"I have no reservations against it." Petofi grinned with ulterior motives. "You see, the ghosts don't bother me in the least." He added a rather odd chuckle. "In fact, when I first arrived here, I was rather perturbed that I would not be able to carry out any of the promises I had made to myself, but instead, I found peace and retired here freed of the complications and trials of my previous life, but still, but for one chance to see my dear old friend Barnabas Collins again. I will show it to you."

"Could it be in the morning?" Quinn stood as Petofi struggled to his feet. "You see, we're all rather tired and hungry, and besides, we'd like to avoid the ghosts if we could."

"I have no problems with that scenario." He grinned with a chuckle. "I will meet you all here first thing in the morning. Enchante…" He kissed Wade's hand before turning to depart. He picked up his book off the next table and headed off to his room up in the hotel. The waitress finally brought the professor's coffee as the four travelers sat back down.

"Anything to eat?" She asked.

"Give us a few minutes." Arturo grinned up to the brunette young lady and took a menu. Their waitress made a look of indifference and returned to her work.

"I'm not sure if I trust him." Wade felt the skin on her hand crawling. "Do you really think he's another slider?"

"I don't know." Quinn wanted a hamburger and soda as he checked how much money he had. "But if there's a chance that Collinwood has a one way door to our world, I think we might have to chance it."

"A chance to get out of this traveling nightmare." Rembrandt wanted to risk it. "I say we go for it."

"I could adjust the timer to tap into a singularity." Quinn replied.

"All right," Arturo planned a sequence of events. "We get something to eat and get rooms here for the night. In the morning, we travel up to Collinwood and see what it has to offer. Agreed?" They gestured for the waitress.


	6. Chapter 6

6

Daylight did nothing to make this alternate reality of Collinwood any more cheerful. At dusk, it looked even more ruined and decrepit. The stone shell reached up to the sky around the missing east wing devoid of rooms and wood timbers. Daylight reached through the hole above the foyer and vines and weeds grew up entwined around furniture and ruined wood furnishings. Sometimes, the sound of giggling kids sounded from the basement, or footsteps tramped across the barely intact upstairs hall. A stray dog scavenging for food in the deserted kitchen felt a presence and ran for freedom out through a shattered window in the old scullery. In the distance, a hesitant cab driver named Matt Oh drove his five odd passengers up to the old house. He didn't say a word about the ghosts to them. He just listened to the weeds and would-be saplings being dragged through the underside of his cab as he dropped off his fare.

"I'll wait at the bottom of the hill for you." He remarked with his Korean sense of humor. "I always wait down there for anyone crazy enough to come up here."

"Why?" Rembrandt peered at him through the car window. "What have you seen up here?"

"Don't ask." Oh shifted his cab into gear and pulled off to wait at the bottom of the hill. Wade shivered a bit in the presence of this crumbling house and tried to picture it in its prime. It must have been quite a house back then before the Collins family left it. Quinn put his arm around her and escorted her forward as Petofi led the way.

"I wonder where the ghosts are." Arturo wondered out loud.

"They know we're here. " Petofi revealed as he pushed into the foyer and turned right for the stairs. "The majority of them are harmless. Daphne protects the spirits of the children and a few lurk the grounds aimlessly, but the one we need to fear is Gerard. He seems to believe the estate is his and therefore he holds dominion over the other spirits. He can be quite dangerous and even control anyone with a mere glance." From the balcony over the foyer, Petofi turned left down the long hall and then turned right for the main corridor stretching the house. Assorted debris and ruined furnishing knocked around under their feet as they trudged forward.

"He can't control you?" Quinn asked.

"My will is stronger." Petofi motioned to the door at the end of the hall. He turned the doorknob and pushed it open to the transparent woman in white standing beyond it. Wade shrieked at her appearance and leapt to Quinn's arms. Rembrandt and Arturo stood amazed at her. She was brunette with long straight hair and very attractive except for her pale skin and morose demeanor. Her clothing possibly dated to the Nineteenth Century. Her arms rested before her with her ten fingers entwined before her.

"Mrs. Harridge," Petofi recognized her spirit. "My, I have not seen you in weeks." Her lips started speaking inaudible words only someone as sensitive as Petofi could hear. Quinn tried to brush forward and touch her, but the air around her in the dark hall beyond felt frozen solid. Where he was, he felt warm, but the air around Daphne was frozen. She seemed to barely acknowledge the brilliant young man and then stepped away and vanished.

"I didn't hear anything." Arturo's heart was beating quickly as he realized he'd seen a ghost. "What did she say?"

"She's telling us to turn back." Petofi reported. "She's claiming there's a presence here that even Gerard is wary of." He chuckled arrogantly. "Obviously a lie. This way…" He continued further. Wade looked to Quinn for support as Arturo and Rembrandt continued forward. Quinn checked the timer in his hand as it counted down. They had an hour left as they pressed forward.

Petofi marched further down a corridor of rooms and deserted furniture and then turned right to the west wing. The double doors of the suite Barnabas had locked him in back in main time were at the far end. Thinking of the look of the face in his old nemesis, he trudged on as Arturo marveled at antique furniture being left to rot unattended. Dark shadows moved and surrounded them as Petofi reached the threshold of the upstairs library. Coming closing on the mysterious suite, he stopped near the old library as a lovely petite blonde emerged from it and stood her ground outside it. Clad in a black sweater and green skirt and narrowed her eyes and stared upon her five trespassers.

"Carolyn Stoddard." Petofi stopped before her. "I can't believe even you could return to life. You're also so much more younger than the time we last met."

"I have no idea what you're talking about." Her head gestured distrustfully. "What are you people doing in this house?"

"Count Petofi?" Quinn stepped forward. "Do you know her?"

"I knew of her in my world." Petofi looked back upon her. "In this world, I was lead to believe she died in this house in 1995." He stepped closer to her as he removed the glove from his right hand. "Are you supposed to be the presence I'm to be afraid of? Let me see how you handle my power!" He reached for her face and she reached both her hands for his. Petofi started screaming in pain as well as she did. Quinn watched as she actually had him to the wall and even pushed him into the library. To save Petofi, Quinn and Rembrandt reached to grab the blonde pinning him to the floor. With one swat, Quinn flew across the hall and knocked down the door of a bedroom. Rembrandt flew across the library and hit the wall before plummeting to the floor. Something was hurting Carolyn Stoddard, but not quite as much as what was hurting Petofi. The old man was screaming in pain as she laughed over him.

"What's going on?" Wade screamed. "What's she doing to him?" Arturo lifted a chair and cracked it over Carolyn's head. Straddling Petofi's body, she flinched a bit and turned to face the old professor. An evil giggle came from her as her eyes looked up to him.

"Get away from him!" Rembrandt realized how strong she was and feared anything she would do might cripple him. He cracked another chair over her head as Carolyn dropped to the floor. Pushing the professor out of the way, he turned round and watched Quinn seal up the doors. Using a piece of furniture to jam the doors shut, Quinn pushed open the doors to the suite and aimed the timer.

"It has to be now!" He screamed as Carolyn punched her arm through the wood door. Wade ducked from her and looked up to a new slide hole bursting open in the deserted room. Resembling a white hole in space, it started blowing around all the debris in the hall and then started popping. Instead of one opening, it was popping into two, then three and then five at once. Something in the room was interfering with their slide!

"Don't go!" Carolyn called to them. "We can be friends!"

"Maybe in another life!" Arturo glared at her.

"It has to be now!" Quinn yelled over their bursting portal. Jumping first, Quinn vanished ahead through the dimensional aperture. Wade joined him next as Rembrandt allowed the professor to go next. Looking back as Carolyn knocked the sliding doors out of her way, Rembrandt brought up the rear. Curiously and confusingly watching the popping energies in the room, Carolyn stood wondering what was happening and jumped in as well. One last pop and the portal vanished. The flying debris in the air dropped to the floor as the wind vanished. Everything settled and restored to what passed as normal.

A bedroom door opened and the ghost of Gerard Stiles marched out and stared out to the suite before him. Wondering what happened to a certain Dr. Julia Hoffman and her vampire companion from years before, he brooded over whether they too were in another world out there. Partially interested over these extra-temporal travelers, he marched into the library with a proud and arrogant swagger. Lying on the floor near the door was the remains of the former Count Petofi. Desiccated and stripped of life by that succubus, the once immortal count laid before him as an ignominious pile of dried bones. The count was once so pompous and determined to destroy him and now he was a virtual shell of what he once was. Stiles began laughing know he had actually won over the one man who could have destroyed him.


	7. Chapter 7

7

In 1972, Quentin Collins said he'd never return to Collinwood. Memories of Angelique Stokes, his ex-wife, still haunted his nightmares. He never really loved her as much as she thought he did, but she did give him a son to be proud of when she wasn't sleeping with everyone else. Her list of paramours was practically endless. Among them was his own cousin Roger, his own cousin! How fitting that Roger would be the one to kill her, but had he killed her? Less than a year later, Angelique had seemed to return in the form of her twin sister, Alexis, and that turned out to be her as well. Did Alexis ever truly exist? After twenty-five years, Quentin wasn't sure of any of the weird things that happened before Collinwood burned down. Two people reportedly died in the fire: his cousin, Barnabas, and Julia Hoffman, the housekeeper. After the embers of the west wing cooled and were stoked, no traces of them were ever found. Even Roxanne Drew, a woman Quentin barely knew, claimed that she had seen Barnabas and Julia wink out before her very eyes. After all these years, the events of that summer in 1970 still confused him to his very soul.

Even ruined and nearly burned to the ground, Collinwood deserved to be rebuilt. Quentin didn't want to live there, but he knew that his family estate deserved to be respected. Following the old plans and schematics from the drawings of Isaac and Brutus Collins plus a few of his own, Collinwood was rising from the ashes once more. A bit more modern and a bit less Gothic, it was going to be a home to be proud of once more. His wife's old room was being turned into a large patio at the end of the west wing. A turning brass staircase from it and down the outside of the mansion led to the garden and the back veranda. Finally feeling his past was behind him, Quentin looked up with optimism to the blue sky as felt the rays of sunshine caress his face for the first time.

"Darling," His current wife, Maggie Collins, called him back in to the west wing hallway. "Your contractor needs your approval on some new sketches for the dining room."

"I'm on my way." Quentin looked at her while stroking his brown and gray beard. He started to turn back in to join her then paused and looked back nostalgically. He gazed upon the incomplete stone balcony upon his wife's old room and chided himself for recalling her more pleasant wife-like traits. She could be romantic, but she could also be a heartbreaker and a dream crusher.

"Rest in piece, Angelique." He replied out loud and strided once more into the house. As he closed up the doors to the house the wind picked up and whistled through them. Quentin just chose to ignore it. Mixed into the wind, a flash of light burst and popped. It returned in a separate spot and popped a bit louder than before as a figure tumbled through it. Clutching the timer, he hit the stone patio hard and groaned as the pain went through his shoulder and to his arm. Groaning a bit, he realized something else. He was alone. The slide tunnel was absent and he was the only one who had appeared.

"Wade?" He groaned as he stood. "Rembrandt? Professor?" Where were they? Did he lose them? His imagination feared the most. The tunnel had split and contorted around them so badly he somehow felt he never see them again. He looked to the timer to see how much time he had: five hours, forty-seven minutes, fifty-five minutes and twelve seconds.

"Guys?" He remised as he looked from the huge balcony across the estate of Collinwood and out to the sea beyond the far trees. Maybe, just maybe, they had emerged here too apart from him.

"Oh no!" Rembrandt tumbled from another flash of light and felt himself rolling head over feet down a hill several feet until he crashed into some bushes. Scratched, bruised and sore, he groaned and lifted himself to his feet.

"Guys?" He looked around for his friends. They were nowhere in sight and so was the slide tunnel. It had closed up with them. Looking up the hill, he looked up to Collinwood once more. In this world, it looked like it was being built. Scaffolding and workmen surrounded its burnt crumbling walls and rebuilt its roof to specifications. Had he been separated from them? Would they be up there?

Dusting himself off, Professor Arturo stood already at the front entrance after landing on the front veranda on the front of the house. The double doors of the estate hung open as carpenters carried wood and sheetrock to replace walls. A tall ladder a few feet away supported glaziers polishing a new crystal chandelier. In the last world, Collinwood was ruined, and now he had a chance to see it restored to its glory.

"Yes," Quentin Collins looked out from the drawing room. "Can I help you?"

"Allow me to introduce myself," Arturo started unconsciously forming a story to let him into the house. "I am Professor Maximillian Arturo, I'm a historian. When I heard that Collinwood was being restored, I hoped for a chance to see it myself. You are Mr. Collins, I presume?"

"Quentin Collins." Quentin shook the professor's hand. "Welcome to my family home, Professor." Quentin escorted him out of the way of men carrying out fire-damaged debris. "I imagine you'd like to hear its history."

"If it isn't a bother." Arturo was desperate to find his traveling companions. "You know, I've always been fascinated by the place."

"A lot of people have been," Quentin mused a bit and gestured his revisions to his contractor. "Now lets see, the estate was built in 1794 by Isaac and Brutus Collins…" He moved on a tour of his family home.

"Quinn… Rembrandt…" Wade whispered silently in the dark kitchen looking for her friends after crashing down the back steps. Where was everyone? Why were they separated? She peeked into a pantry and heard herself discovered. She turned back to look upon an auburn-haired woman wearing a black sweater and white Capri pants. Her long hair was in a ponytail and she looked upon Wade with confusion.

"Are you the housekeeper I asked for?" Maggie Evans-Collins questioned her.

"Housekeeper?" Wade wondered. Why not? She'd had worst jobs in other worlds. "Oh, uh, yes, yes, ma'am."

"Oh good," Maggie moved forward and gestured her to sit and be interviewed. "How much were you told?"

"Not much." Wade answered truthfully.

"Well," Maggie started. "This is my husband's home. We had a very bad fire here back in 1972. He wants to sell it, but we'll live here until that happens. In the mean time, Quentin and I have two small children, Quentin Junior and Elizabeth. I'll handle raising them and you will cover cooking and housekeeping. The job pays…"

"Mrs. Collins…" A workman interrupted as he came into the kitchen. "Where can I find the fuse box?"

"Through the dining room, down the small hall to the stairs and into the basement." Maggie pointed the way. "Take the first right past the old servants quarters."

"Yes, ma'am." The young man answered. Pushing through the swinging door, he crossed the length of the musty and dark dining room. The massive table was covered with white sheets and the chairs stacked above it. In the great hall beyond the arched entryway, Mr. Collins gave the history to Professor Arturo.

"In 1897," Quentin continued the family history as Arturo looked upon the portrait of the second Quentin Collins. "My grandfather inherited the estate after the death of Daphne Collins, his grandmother…"

The young man just continued further down the downstairs hall of the East Wing rather than hear the history of the estate. Passing the alternate entry to the study and a few other rooms, he came to a staircase under a plate glass window descending to the cellar and into the great maw of the house. Immersed in darkness untouched by darkened light bulbs in the ceiling, he found the right turn and headed for the lighted room ahead of him. In the far corner was staircase leading up under the staircase in the foyer. An arch in the left wall lead to the sub-basement and two small rooms rested side by side far from him. He noticed the five main fuse boxes of the estate lined up to his right, but as he turned with his voltage meter in his hand, there was a glimpse of a figure. Carolyn Stoddard's long blonde hair whirled around her head as she pushed him to the basement floor and allowed her touch to absorb his life force from his body. There was a muffled cry as he shrieked in eternal pain and then a gasp from her lips as she sucked the life energies from his body.


	8. Chapter 8

8

Quinn had managed to talk the foreman to give him a job on the site. He was unsure as to where his traveling companions were. They had been separated in the slide tunnel before, but they had always ended up together either a few minutes apart or from separate locations in the same timeline. Glancing briefly at the timer in his jacket pocket draped over the guest toilet for the first floor, he tightened up the last pipe in the replace sink and then lifted himself to check it. Turning the tap, he was grateful to see that it worked.

"How am I going to find anyone in a house this size?" Someone replied outside the bathroom. That was the Professor's voice!

"Professor!" Quinn rushed forward grateful to have found him.

"Quinn, my boy…" They grabbed and hugged each other in shocked and happy surprise. Arturo considered him almost his own son and was glad that he had not lost him afterward.

"Where's Wade and Rembrandt?' He asked. "Are they with you?"

"No," Quinn checked the timer. "Forty three minutes. Not a lot of time to track them down, but if you made it, they made it!"

"We'll split up." Quinn took charge. "Meet in the kitchen in thirty."

"Check!"

In the kitchen, Wade switched on the dishwashing machine and turned to chop up the vegetables that Maggie had left for her to chop out for the Collins Family dinner. Her thoughts of being trapped in this reality and never seeing her friends again were overwhelming her, but working in this estate and making a simple but honest living was not something she could walk away from so fast. She needed it now more than ever.

Standing to dump the vegetable in a metal strainer in the sink, she heard someone rapping at the glass of the back door. A slight gasp and a moment to toss her hair, she turned the doorknob and looked up expecting a deliveryman or another carpenter.

"Excuse me," Rembrandt Brown stood there. "But I'm looking for… Wade!" He lifted her up and hugged her hilariously happy. A tear fell from her face as he inhaled her scent once more. So close… they came so close to losing each other again, but the gods of time were beaming upon them to come to their rescue once more.

"Please tell me Quinn and the Professor are with you." She asked.

"I was hoping they were with you." He looked back to her heart struck.

"Well," The Crying Man wiped away his tears of joy. "If we made it, maybe they…" A scream upstairs cut short that sentence. Wade's head turned to the stairs from the kitchen and raced ahead with Rembrandt behind her. At the top of the stairs, Maggie Collins raced from the entrance to the West Wing and nearly crashed into them. Quentin collected her into his arms ahead of Quinn and Professor Arturo. It was a surreal time for a reunion for them to find each other. Maggie hysterically cried into her husband's chest and pointed to the west wing.

"Quentin," She pointed through the door. "A body. There's a dead man in there!"

"We'll check it out." Quinn gestured to Rembrandt and the professor. Wade comforted Maggie as the men pressed forward to investigate. Just through the doors, an archway to their left lead to a darkened room with an ascending stairway to the balcony outside the tower room. Halfway down, a dried and desiccated figure clad in the same attire of some of the workmen restoring the estate reached out in pain. Quentin had sent this man to the attic just an hour ago, but he looked as if he'd been dead for years! On the balcony outside the tower room, the flawless and perfect beauty of Carolyn Stoddard emerged from the dark distantly staring down to her guests from the door outside the tower room.

"Who are you people?" She looked upon them as a goddess upon mere mortals. "What are you doing in my house?"

"Carolyn?" Quentin stared up unable to look away. It was his cousin, but she was supposed to be dead! She had been a victim of his deranged wife he believed, but she was looking down upon him younger and more beautiful than he remembered her. "You can't be alive…. Doesn't anybody ever die in this damned house?"

"Do I know you?" This parallel Carolyn had never known the Quentin Collins of her reality except as a ghost from the Late Nineteenth Century.

"She must have followed us through!" Quinn realized.

"Mr. Collins," Arturo stepped beside the master of the house. "She's not your Carolyn. She followed us from another timeline and is extremely and incredibly dangerous!"

Quentin looked at him with incredulous disbelief. Where had he heard this timeline stuff before? He had heard it from his co-called Cousin Barnabas after seeing it for himself briefly several years prior. His subconscious flashed back on a Roxanne Drew watching him vanish in his wife's burning bedroom. Could he have actually made it back to his own world?

"Dangerous?" Carolyn giggled like a little girl. "How could I hurt anyone?" She giggled playfully then hissed and jumped over the railing. Her would-be targets scattered and bolted back into the hallway for the west wing. Just behind the Professor, Quentin turned round as the vicious and possessed counterpart of his beloved cousin landed in a crouch and then jumped against the sliding doors that he was closing and latching against her.

"Quentin," Maggie and Wade came up behind him. "What did you find?"

Carolyn's fist crashed through the thick oak door trying to grab her. Grabbing his wife, Quentin pulled her ahead of Wade and Professor Arturo toward the West Wing of the house. Her supernaturally enhanced strength tearing through the doors, Carolyn turned and looked left for the west wing watching Quinn and Rembrandt rolling a heavy two hundred pound metal cabinet rack of tools for the contractors toward her down the length of the hall. Having gained the momentum it needed, they left the rattling and shaking cacophony of tools and ratchet bits to knock her over to buy themselves some time. Carolyn braced to take the impact.

"Where are we going?" Quentin pressed forward. "My ex-wife's room doesn't exist anymore!"

Behind them, the heavy cabinet of tools had actually sailed through the air just barely missing the Professor and smashed down a door. He threw a chair at the blonde psychopath and she swatted it into sticks of wood and toothpicks.

"It doesn't have to!" Quinn adjusted his timer. "I've got an idea!"

Racing past empty bedrooms lacking doors and unrestored bathrooms, Carolyn rushed forward eager to absorb their souls to increase her life and sustain her beauty. For a split second, she saw the image of her mother in one of those doors and stopped. She was scowling upon her.

"Mother?" She looked in shock. It was her mother's ghost in this reality!

Behind the shade of her mother was the image of even herself as a ghost. It was that of the Carolyn Stoddard of this band of time. The spirit of Roger Collins came up from behind herself from the dark. Standing in her way was the specter of Dameon Edwards looking upon her with vague curiosity. Within the bathroom was the sullen specter of a housekeeper known in life as Julia Hoffman. Murdered by a Dr. Julia Hoffman, a more educated version of herself from another world, she stepped out of the way of her mistress, Angelique Stokes-Collins. Angelique's twin sister, Alexis, cowered in fear from her sister's power. In another dark shadow, Brutus Collins picked at his beard and watched the fascination of these ghosts in awe of this reality-hopping succubus. Carolyn turned round trying to get past them and then turned directly to face the ghost of Angelique Stokes.

"Mrs. Stoddard…" She spoke excitedly. "I have a proposal for you." She beamed eagerly and in anticipating haste. Her icy hands pulled the powerful young woman close and clung to her. Carolyn felt her heart freeze and her body seemingly unwrapping from her own soul and taking on this other powerful entity. Whoever she was, she could not fight her. She dropped to the floor clawing to the carpet and felt her body no longer was her own. Something was happening to her. This powerful spirit was trying to take her over. Her own body, her own demonic immortality would be hers unless she could fight off her powerful will. Her breath tried to scream and her mouth tried to make a noise. This was but one being among dozens she had absorbed. She could conquer her like all the rest. There was no way one mere female phantom could overwhelm her. Her fingers crushed splinters of floorboard wrapped up in patches of carpet in her hands as her head of long blonde hair turned up to face the white portal of energies at the end of the hall created by the Sliders. The gateway from this timeline was open in the doorway to the lost bedroom. Hissing painfully through her teeth, growling in unison with the extra personality in her head, Carolyn Stoddard fought to reach her feet, the ghost of Angelique Collins trying to overtake her, and felt pangs of revenge for a vampire with a familiar name from yet another universe.

"Barnabas Collins!" Two voices echoed from her lips. "You are mine!" This ghost now had the power to take revenge on the man who had killed her for the last time. This Carolyn's body and power would help her do it. She squinted into the maelstrom of glowing dimensional energies and leapt through the center of them. A ball of light followed her vanishing body into the glowing maelstrom of worlds and contrary timelines.

From behind the sliding doors of the upstairs study, Quinn Mallory switched off the gateway and looked out into the dusk on the open veranda outside the hall. Carolyn Stoddard the succucbus was gone and the timer had just enough juice to open another gateway off the estate.

"Who are you people?" Quentin asked holding on to his wife. "Some kind of... universe-hopping heroes?"

"Travelers," Arturo shook his hand. "Trying to get home amidst numerous timelines and possibilities in a myriad multiverse of alternate timelines."

"You know, you're not the first I've met from another world." Quentin answered with Maggie at his side. "Some time back, I met this man named..."

"And we'd love to hear about it, but…" Quinn checked his timer. "We got nineteen minutes to get as far off the estate as possible to create another gateway." He looked to the lost room greatful to be rid of that dangerous blonde heiress.

"We'll never know if that room lead back to our world or not." Wade wondered.

"Yeah," Rembrandt mused grateful for one thing. "But at least that blonde psychopath won't be around to bother you."

PROLOGUE

"Ladies and gentlemen," The female tour guide beamed brightly to her guests. "Welcome to the Carey Mansion. Containing almost a hundred rooms over three floors and a sub-basement, it was built in 1794 by Barnabas and Jeremiah Collins for the Collins Family, but after the death of Daniel Collins in 1843, the last known member of the family, it was acquired by the Carey Family, descendants of Millicent Collins. The Careys lived here for practically a hundred years until 1954 when…" Her head turned to the direction of a female figure coming from upstairs. Standing on the overhead balcony, Carolyn Stoddard looked over the ruined and desolate shadows of her home in this new world. Just barely preserved, it had been stripped and removed of all furniture and furnishings. Some of the rooms showed damage from weathering over the years, and there were bedrooms without floors. It was not in a condition for her to call home and this number of people traipsing through it was not good for her own occult dependencies and hobbies.

"Excuse me, ma'am?" The female tour guide looked up. "Are you lost? Are you from the other tour?"

Carolyn didn't answer. Her vibrant long blonde hair bobbing on her shoulders, she hastened down the steps at inconspicuous speed and her supernaturally enhanced beauty leaving a lasting impression in the men who gazed upon her. She turned on her heel for the front entrance and pushed free through the center of the double doors. Expecting the wooded rolling hills of her family estate outside the mansion, her eyes meanwhile discovered another aspect to this reality's Collinwood. The once proud grounds that once covered the estate had been replaced with walking paths, dormitories, shaded glens and halls of learning. This Carey Mansion that had replaced her family home was in the center of a college university. Young adults, teenagers in love, professors carrying briefcases and packs of social cliques roamed the grounds on the paths or cut through green patches of manicured lawn. Confusingly and worriedly looking around, she wandered trying to fit in to this world to the cobblestone path and started following it to the edge of the converted estate. Behind her, a taxicab dropped off its passenger and she quickly took it over to pick her up.

"Where to, ma'am?" Driver Willie Loomis looked over the back seat to her.

"Elsewhere…" She answered. The cab lurched forward and continued forward. Passing two sororities, an administration building and the Old Collins Cemetery, it drove out through the gates of the property and turned toward town.

"Where do you want to go?" Loomis looked upon her flawless beauty through the rear view mirror as she smiled to him. She scooted behind him in the driver's seat and leaned forward to massage the back of his neck. It felt good at first, but then the psychic shock of his soul being ripped from his body tore him apart. The rapturous blonde then jumped to the front seat and hit the gas pedal after deserting the desiccated body of the hapless cab driver by the side of the road.

END


End file.
